Buying a Graphics Card? on ShoppingSoLow.com

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A graphic card is used to enhance 3D graphics, 2D graphics, video conferencing, and multimedia. A graphic card can assist in delivering powerful and high-resolution throughput by performing much of the graphics processing that would otherwise be done by the personal computer or motherboard.

Graphics cards act as processing powerhouses, offloading from your CPU much of the hard work of calculating how scenes look, particularly in 3D graphics. Taking a 3D scene and rendering it to the screen takes an incredible amount of processing power. So much processing power, in fact, that the fastest graphics processors often have more transistors than mainstream CPUs, require fans to cool them and need direct links to power supplies.

Price Range
Graphic card prices range vary from as little as 450 INR to over 9000 INR. Graphics cards have processors much like the main CPU in your computer system. The processors on graphics cards are called the GPU. The faster the GPU in the card the better it is able to render video and graphics and the more it costs.

Memory
Graphics cards use their own dedicated memory. As with system RAM, the more memory the card has, the better the performance will be. A card with 32MB or 64MB is adequate for basic office tasks, but at least 128MB is required for the latest games and video applications. Graphics card memory cannot usually be upgraded later.

RAMDAC
The Random Access Memory Digital to Analogue Converter takes the image data and converts it to a format that your screen can use. A faster RAMDAC means that the graphics card can support higher output resolutions. Some cards have multiple RAMDACs allowing that card to support multiple displays. 3D Graphics Card

Video Support
There are a few extra features that cards may or may not have that play a major part in certain activities:

DVD Acceleration - Enhances the operating performance of DVDs.
OpenGL Support - Used with some high end 3D modeling software & games.
Direct3D Support - Used with some high end 3D modeling software & games.

You'll want to make sure you pick a card that supports these capabilities if you will be doing 3D modeling or video editing on your computer a lot.

Card Purpose
The last, and perhaps most important thing to consider before you buy a graphics card is, what will you use it for? If gaming is what you want to do with your graphics card, get the card with the fastest processor and most memory that you can afford.